Rivonia Treason Trial

Sound recording
55 sec
Producer: Angus Gibson for The Bomb Shelter
Researcher: Gail Behrmann
Courtesy Apartheid Museum, © National Archives of South
Africa, with thanks to the British Library for transferring the
proceedings of 20 April 1964 from the original Dictabelt dubbings

On 9 October 1963, the Rivonia Treason Trial
commenced at the Supreme Court in Pretoria, with
Justice De Wet presiding. The defence agreed that
Nelson Mandela should make a carefully prepared
speech. The sound recording included in the
exhibition is an excerpt from Mandela’s four hour
speech from the dock delivered on 20 April 1964. His
lawyers, particularly Advocate George Bizos, urged
that the final line be amended from ‘I am prepared to
die’ to ‘if needs be, I am prepared to die’. On 12 June
1964, Justice De Wet handed down the sentence of
life imprisonment instead of death by hanging.